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Grain destined for export stacked on Madras beaches (February 1877) I've started writing a series of posts on photography on World...

Thursday, 26 February 2009

Yaniv Waissa

Yaniv Waissa works with plastic cameras, polaroids, polaroid transfer and conventional film to record memory, destruction and trauma, all with a pre-apocalyptic overlay. He deals with some familiar subject matter but in landscapes charged with meaning and architectural violence- so his work gets under the skin. I especially like his polaroid transfers, a wonderful and mysterious transformational medium. In Waissa's own words:

"I deal with a collective- cultural memory, which I embrace for my own personal needs. I go on a physical journey with my camera; a visual journey of the eyes, imagination and recollection, An emotional journey back in time, to the districts of the memory, districts that contain no comfort. I deal with the present through the past. I capture views, places and objects filled with echoes from the past. A past that is also a present and that lives and revives the memories, the collective traumas and my personal emotions.

I deal with the holocaust, through the camera; I seek to understand, to immortalize something hidden in the sights. I try to ignore the world of images widely connected to the holocaust. I intend to create a new system of associations that will activate personal charges: mine and the viewers'."